Fire HD 8 Reader’s Edition Features Kindle Unlimited & Leather Case

Amazon has turned to Baidu, China’s top search company, to power its Amazon Fire tablet in China — the country where Google and its services are not welcome. A spokesperson for Baidu confirmed that the Chinese firm is also providing apps via 91Wireless — the Android app store it bought for $1.9 billion in 2013 — and online video via its iQiyi service, which is China’s second-largest YouTube-like site behind only Alibaba-owned Youku Tudou. There are already a plethora of tablet devices available in China, many of which are even cheaper than the Fire Tablet while others are more glamorous — such as Xiaomi’s new 999 RMB Mi Pad 2. The setting basically improves reading conditions in dark or dimly lit environments by automatically changing the color temperature of the screen away from blue, which is known to impair sleeping, as well as dimming the brightness.

While it is hard to know how well Amazon’s newest release will fare, the company has picked a solid partner to help market the device and equip it with the right services for Chinese consumers. (Amazon’s own commerce business in China is well behind Alibaba, JD.com and others, giving it less of a launch platform than it enjoys in the U.S. and other parts of the world.) It’s certainly a useful feature, but as part of the new Fire OS “Bellini” rollout, Blue Shade is already available for other Amazon Fire tablets anyway.

By launching a tablet aimed squarely at readers, Kindle hopes to convince people that this tablet can be just as good as an e-reader — and does more because it’s a proper, Internet-connected device with a color screen. Elsewhere in its product pitch, Amazon focuses on other features that readers may be interested in, such as Amazon’s Bookerly font, which is designed to improve reading on digital screens, and Word Runner, which focuses on one word at a time to make it easier to read. Again, these features are already available on other Amazon tablets, so it’s essentially a repackaging of an existing product for a specific use-case.